Five guns seized in Cam­bridge raid

WESTERN BUREAU: THE MA­JOR Or­gan­ised Crime and Anti-Cor­rup­tion Agency (MOCA) and the Anti-Lot­tery Scam Task Force came up trumps in Cam­bridge, St James, yes­ter­day, seiz­ing five guns, a quan­tity of am­mu­ni­tion, and items as­so­ci­ated with the il­licit lot­tery scam, in­clud­ing lead sheets and elec­tronic equip­ment.

“I see this as just re­ward for the ef­forts we have been mak­ing to re­move il­le­gal weapons from the hands of the crim­i­nals, who have been cre­at­ing havoc in the parish,” said Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Mar­lon Nes­beth, the com­mand­ing of­fi­cer for St James.

PO­LICE RE­PORTS

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, shortly af­ter 7 a.m., the MOCA and Anti-Lot­tery Scam teams jointly ex­e­cuted a search war­rant at a three-storey house on Duck­ett’s Road in Cam­bridge. Dur­ing a search of the house, they found one M16 as­sault ri­fle, two 9mm pis­tols, two shot­guns, 160 rounds of am­mu­ni­tion for shot­guns, and 45 9mm rounds. They also found lead sheets and other lot­tery scam­ming para­pher­na­lia, cel­lu­lar phones, and elec­tronic equip­ment used for lot­tery scam­ming.

“We have had an eye on Duck­ett’s Road for quite a while ... . A few weeks ago, we seized an AK47 ri­fle and a .38 re­volver in that same com­mu­nity,” said Nes­beth, “The young­sters, who have a crim­i­nal mind­set, all be­lieve that they should have guns, and un­for­tu­nately, they have the re­sources to get them through the pro­ceeds of the lot­tery scam.”

In yes­ter­day’s op­er­a­tion, which lasted late into the af­ter­noon, the 10 oc­cu­pants of the house, which in­clude a woman and sev­eral chil­dren, were kept out­side un­der sur­veil­lance as the house was searched and the of­fen­sive items re­moved as ev­i­dence.

While no one was of­fi­cially ar­rested and charged at press time, a po­lice source told The Gleaner that he ex­pects that two men, who were among the per­sons found in the house, will be charged in re­la­tion to the guns and the lot­tery-scam­ming para­pher­na­lia.